Jazz

Our guest this week is jazz vocalist Judy Page. She's the featured performer in this month's "Jazz Night in the Heights" event, sponsored by the Central Illinois Jazz Society. Page talks about some of the ensembles she's been associated with, about being drawn to the jazz standards of the 1920s and 1930s, and the advantages of working with many of the same musicians over a long period.

"Jazz Night in the Heights" begins Sunday night at 6:00 at the Trailside Event Center, at 4416 North Prospect Road in Peoria Heights.

This week, we're talking about the Peoria Riverfront Jazz and Art Festival, with Mary Jo Papich. The event features live performances throughout the day, representing a wide range of jazz styles; a jazz improv workshop; and exhibiting artists. Papich talks about the need she saw for the event, about some of the Peoria natives who are returning to perform, and about other upcoming jazz events with the Central Illinois Jazz Society.

The Peoria Riverfront Jazz and Art Festival runs Saturday from 2:00 to 10:00 p.m. at the CEFCU Stage on the Peoria Riverfront.

The 39th Annual Chicago Jazz Festival will celebrate the 100th birthdays of Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Ella Fitzgerald. The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events recently announced the headliners. The three-day festival at Millennium Park and the Chicago Cultural Center will be Labor Day weekend, Aug. 31 to Sept. 2.

This week, we're on the phone with jazz legend Ramsey Lewis. The Peoria Symphony Orchestra kicks off its new season in a concert with the Ramsey Lewis Trio this weekend. The program includes jazz standards, and Lewis' own "Concerto for Jazz Trio" and orchestra. Lewis talks about the genesis of his piece, which was first written for the Joffrey Ballet. He also connects the work to the improvisational traditions of the Baroque era, and reflects on the state of jazz today.

Five years ago, Pete Carney and a friend wrote a little textbook and got it printed up at Kinko’s. Within a few months, it was adopted by the prestigious International Baccalaureate program. It’s now used in more than 200 schools, several colleges and universities, and is up for adoption by the Los Angeles school district and the state of Florida. That’s not bad for a guy with zero credentials in education.

It’s the kind of class students take to fulfill some requirement, and hopefully get an easy A. The existing textbook was your standard history of orchestral music, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and other ancient Europeans. As a musician, attuned to audience feedback, Carney could sense that the kids were not into it.

“I had had that experience maybe as a performer on stage,” Carney says, "trying to reach out to audiences to make sure they could feel the music. So for me going into the classroom, it was sort of a natural step of, ‘Wait, if you guys aren’t feeling this, then I know you’re not enjoying it and you’re not learning anything.’ I think the system that I walked into was just a flat approach of teaching what’s in the book.”

The book presented a couple of barriers. One was its chronological approach.

“It was like starting in the Middle Ages. That’s like, you’re just like, I mean you’re trying to kill people when you do that, you know?” Carney says. "I wasn’t comfortable with it and my students weren’t responding to that format…. It’s too far back in the time machine.”

But the bigger problem, Carney realized, was that nothing in the book could compete with the bottomless well of information students could access on their smart phones.

“It was a discovery for me that, with the evolution of Wikipedia, and using the internet in general, my students all had access to the information that we used to only have access to as the teacher,” Carney says.

"So if everybody has the same information, how do we change teaching?”

This is where many teachers adopt the simplest change possible: banning cell phone use in class. Carney took the opposite approach.

“I started with just creating worksheets,” he says. "I started with just one exercise at a time. Where I found out that i could get my students to do their homework if the homework was on YouTube.”

The standard textbook the class was supposed to be using -- it provided all the music on a CD.

“But nobody will listen to the CD, for whatever reason,” Carney says. "It’s always been like that. But by asking them to listen to YouTube, they could access it on their phone, it almost didn’t feel like homework, and they were more interested in doing it. … And it was just that change in the delivery method of the homework that opened up my classroom.”

Carney had students learn to identify the sounds of various instruments by finding samples of a bassoon, a viola, a Moog synthesizer and a flange pedal online. He had them analyze pieces by Count Basie, Jimi Hendrix, Claude Debussy and Astor Piazolla. He had them watch videos of famous conductors presiding over rehearsals. This method changed the class from an exercise in memorization and regurgitation into something deeper.

“You’re asking them to participate, you’re asking them to construct knowledge, you’re asking them to do their homework on YouTube and listen and bring stuff back to class,” Carney says. "Bring your observations. It’s not a one-way street. It’s a two-way conversation.”

The beauty of this method is that it works with Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms — and even the Middle Ages.

“I always try and start with: There’s a way for people to be curious. You know, there’s a way for people to be interested in this," Carney says. "So how do I make that bridge to these people -- to the dead white guys? There’s a way, because they had tough lives too. The hard part is just the bridge. It’s not the music. You can’t change Beethoven. It’s beautiful stuff. You just have to change the way for people to get over there, to get across to the music.”

This week, we're talking with Dick Marsho from the Central Illinois Jazz Society. They're co-sponsoring the River City Jazz Festival on the Peoria Riverfront, tomorrow from noon to 10:00 p.m. Marsho talks about some of the artists and bands featured in the event, which offers a range of jazz styles. He also talks about the Society's monthly events at the Landmark Recreation Center, which spotlight local jazz musicians; and about a series of Thursday-night jazz concerts, which run in July and August on the CEFCU Stage.

This week, we're talking with the Heartland Festival Orchestra's David Commanday. The HFO welcomes legendary trumpeter Doc Severinsen and the Stiletto Brass Quintet as guest artists in their next concert. The program features highlights from the jazz age -- music of Gershwin, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller and others. The concert is Saturday night at Five Points in Washington.